By JTA Staff · December 14, 2012

Inspired by a dream that the Netherlands was underwater, Johan Huibers consulted the Bible for his solution. Huibers, a religious Christian, just completed a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark, following biblical instructions to the cubit. His ark measures 427 feet in length, took two decades to complete and is moored in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. “I want to make people question [their purpose on Earth] so that they go looking for answers,” Huibers said.

Kevin Youkilis playing for the New York Yankees: It’s a diamond-encrusted shidduch. The Bronx Bombers signed Youkilis to a one-year, $12 million contract this week to replace Alex Rodriguez at third base while A-Rod rehabilitates his ailing hip. We’re talking one of the top Jewish players in decades performing in a huge market of pinstripe-crazy Jewish fans. No doubt they’ll be doing the hora if the former Boston Red Sox All-Star, late of the Chicago White Sox, can torment the Yankees’ major rival.

A State Supreme Court jury in Brooklyn delivered justice this week for an unnamed teenager who alleged she had been abused by an eminent figure in the New York borough’s Satmar Chasidic community. Nechemya Weberman was found guilty Monday on 59 counts of abuse in a rare instance of an Orthodox sex offender being tried and convicted in a secular court. The victim, now 18, testified that Weberman had forced himself on her during closed-door counseling sessions beginning when she was 12. “I was nervous, I was reliving trauma,” she told the Daily News. “But I was sure he was going down.”   

Josh Frumkin, a financial resources development associate at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, walked away from “Jeopardy!” following a three-day victory run with $43,601. Part of his winnings came from sweeping the “Christmas Parties” category with “Who was the Drummer Boy?” Frumkin, whose streak was broken on Tuesday, was arguably even more notable for the story he told during the quirky get-to-know-you portion of the broadcast: At an office barbecue, he set himself on fire while tending the hot dogs.

Albena Kiselev was in the process of converting to Judaism, but her students at the Condorcet secondary school in France were harassing her for the change, saying they didn’t want a Jewish teacher. The chief rabbi of Lyon published an open letter about the matter, and shortly afterward Kiselev’s contract at the school outside Lyon was terminated. The French Education Ministry said the students were disciplined but the rabbi, Richard Wertenschlag, was unmoved, accusing the authorities of “an attempt to ignore reality.”.

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